[OSM-talk] Summary of Växjö mapping weekend

[Andy Robinson]

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 10:22 PM
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Summary of Växjö mapping weekend
> 
> 
> So, this past weekend we gathered to cover Växjö, a city in 
> Sweden just south of me.  Only me (LA2) and one more person 
> (Eriso) had signed up.  A shortage of vehicles made us drive 
> to Växjö in one car, but we were promised that bikes could be 
> hired on site.  We left Linköping at 3 pm on Friday and the 
> drive took near 3 hours, including a coffee break.  It turned 
> out there were indeed bikes, but somebody had lost the keys, 
> so we were left with one vehicle.
> We started to drive around on major roads and stopped for 
> Lebanese fast food, which we learned is available from two 
> restaurants in this city of 50,000.
> 
> On Saturday, we were joined by wikipedian Agneta, a former 
> resident of Växjö, who guided us around town.  Apart from 
> collecting GPS tracklogs, we were also on a mission to shoot 
> photos for Wikipedia and Wikitravel.  At 2 pm I gave a 
> presentation at the city library, covering various 
> collaborative Internet projects, primarily Project Runeberg 
> and Wikipedia, but also a bit about OpenStreetMap.  
> Unfortunately, most of this was news to the small audience, 
> so OSM was a bit beyond their horizon.  
> Anyway, the session lasted until the library closed at 4 pm, 
> and then we continued our tour of the town and ended up with 
> dinner, before Agneta left us and we went back to base, which 
> was a youth hostel just north of town. While Eriso started to 
> load tracks into JOSM, I went out for some more driving, 
> covering motorway exits.  
> There was a magnificant thunderstorm with lightning all around.
> 
> On Sunday morning, we had the idea that we had covered all of 
> the commercial centre and most of the biggest roads, so we 
> went driving through some other parts of town.  The only last 
> planned activity was a "wiki cafe" meetup at 2 pm, where of 
> course nobody else showed up. These meetups are announced on 
> the Swedish Wikipedia, and have attracted up to 20 people in 
> Stockholm, but Växjö apparently belongs to some 
> underdeveloped country, where nobody uses computers ever.  We 
> left after just one hour, and decided to drive some uncovered 
> roads on our way back, which resulted in a 7 hour journey 
> (including a food stop and the near complete mapping of 
> another city) before we got back home.
> 
> I have uploaded 15 tracklogs to OSM and 128 photos to 
> Wikimedia Commons.  I hope Eriso will upload his soon.  I 
> should write a better summary / documentation for the OSM wiki too.
> 
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/V%C3%A4xj%C3%B6_2006-09-30
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4xj%C3%B6
> 
> During the weekend we also found three geocaches.  There are 
> around 20 in Växjö, but we only took some easy ones that we 
> stumbled upon.  Perhaps a geocaching event could have 
> attracted more participants to the mapping weekend?  Has 
> anybody tried this?
> 
> All in all, it was a disappointment that the planning didn't 
> help to attract more users, and that our 
> outreach/presentation in Växjö didn't reach the right 
> audience.  I don't know how that could have been 
> accomplished.  Still, it was more fun than going there alone, 
> and it did help to cover the city with GPS tracks and photos. 
>  For now, we know that it is possible to hold a mapping 
> weekend, but we still have to find out how to make them more 
> successful.
> 

Lars, you are a true explorer and dedicated OSMer. Despite all the odds
and a real lack of interest locally in Växjö you clearly had an
enjoyable weekend, which I believe is the whole point.

Cheers

Andy

> 
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> 
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